Teaching English in Saudi Arabia

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The educational system in Saudi Arabia consists of 6 years of elementary school, 3 years of junior and 3 years of senior high school. In grades 1-3, the students learn to read and in grades 4-12, the students read for comprehension. At each grade level, the students use a reading textbook and students throughout the kingdom study the same reading textbooks and same reading curriculum. First the study will define the word identification, reading comprehension, product and process skills and reading stages. Then, it will describe the reading lesson design in each grade level and across the twelve textbooks (passages, exercises, lexical items, pictorial illustrations and so on). In addition, the word identification skills developed in grades 1-3, the reading comprehension skill levels developed in grades 4-12 (i.e., literal, inferential, appreciation and critical) and the reading process skills taught (identifying the organizational structure of the text, ability to derive the meaning of difficult words from context, anaphora comprehension and study skills) will be described. Results reported are based on an analysis of the reading comprehension questions and exercises and a list of word identification skills, reading comprehension skills, text structure, anaphora comprehension, contextual analysis and study skills. The study will also analyze the passage content and will report of the kinds of themes read. Strengths and weaknesses of the Saudi national curriculum for developing reading and literacy skills in Arabic (students’ L1) will be reported.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The aim of this workshop is to show English teachers how reading comprehension can be effectively taught to EFL/ESL struggling college readers. The teaching strategies include the following: (1) Helping students understand the book and chapter organization; (2) Predicting the content of a reading text from the text title before reading, comparing a text to a building, writing the topic of each paragraph in the margin, underlining the main ideas, numbering the supporting details, circling words that signal chronological order, classification, definition, comparison and contrast, exemplification, process…etc., showing the structure of the passage, i.e. relating text title to the paragraph topics and subtopics by drawing a tree diagram and filling it out while reading, summarizing the main ideas and supporting details in a chart after the reading and helping students recognize the text type: compare/contrast, classification, illustration, chronology (3) Helping students derive meanings of difficult words from context (without looking them up n a dictionary) by using different types of context clues such as punctuation marks, definitions, synonyms, antonyms and morphological analysis; (4) Helping students decode words in context: by highlighting silent letters, double letters, and hidden sounds in a word, and identifying the part of speech of words by breaking them into prefix, suffix and root (5) Helping students connect pronouns and determiners with their antecedents; (6) Helping students connect the information contained in the text with their background knowledge; (7) Helping students understand questions by circling the question word (8) Circling key words in a paragraph while skimming; and (9) Recognizing sentence types such as passive sentences, complex sentences, embedded sentences… etc; and (10) Asking questions while reading. Sample texts will be used to show attendees how reading can be taught using the above strategies.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The aim of the present study was to examine the amount of reading texts, reading exercises and reading skills covered by reading instructors in ESL college classrooms at each college level. Subjects of the present study consisted of 12 instructors (3 instructors per level) who taught reading in Fall 2000 and Spring 2001. Since students usually mark texts, do exercises and take notes on their textbooks, 3 reading textbooks per instructor were collected from students in levels 1-4. Each book was examined page by page. The number of units, number of reading selections, number of reading skills and number of reading exercises taught in each textbook were calculated. It was found that the typical instructor taught 50% of the reading selections in Interactions I and Interactions II, 33% of the reading selections in Mosaic I and 20% of the reading selections in Mosaic II. In Addition, the typical instructor taught 62% of the reading and vocabulary skills and 50% of the testing skills in Interactions I. In Interactions II, the typical instructor taught 50% of the reading skills, vocabulary, and testing and study skills. In Mosaic I, the typical instructor taught 33% of the reading skills, 40% of the vocabulary skills, 55% of the testing and study skills. In Mosaic II, the typical instructor taught 25% of the reading, vocabulary, testing and study skills. A detailed report of the findings will be given. Results will be discussed in the light of issues affecting student achievement in ESL such as the amount of time allocated to reading instruction and the relationship between the amount of material covered and reading achievement.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

65 EFL freshman students were enrolled in their first writing course in college. Before instruction, they were pretested. Pretest results revealed many writing problems. Then, the students studied Interactions One. Each week, one chapter was covered and the students completed all of the skills, exercises and writing tasks in the chapter and wrote two one-paragraph essays. They were encouraged to write and not to worry about spelling, grammatical, punctuation or capitalization mistakes. While doing the exercises and writing the paragraphs, I monitored their work individually and provided individual help. I gave communicative feedback. Self-editing and peer-editing were encouraged. Extra credit was given for good paragraphs. The students were tested every other week. Quizzes were always graded, returned to the students with comments on strengths and weaknesses. Answers were always discussed in class. At the end of the semester, the students were posttest. Posttest essays showed a great improvement in their writing ability. Improvement was noted in the students’ assignments, in essay length, neatness, mechanical correctness and style. A detailed account of the factors that lead to improvement in writing English will be given.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The Online Writing Collaboration Project (OWCP) is a pioneer online learning management system in Saudi Arabia and Arab countries, developed, designed, updated, and managed by a Saudi graduate student at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It aims at helping EFL/ESL students of different proficiency levels, with different cultural backgrounds and educational settings, in different parts of the world develop their writing skills and share knowledge and experiences though several writing tools readily available for them. It is free of charge. Students participate voluntarily. Participating students, instructors, leaders, moderators and tutors come from different countries and are native and non-native speakers. Attendees will gain knowledge about OWCP components, writing tools and resources, discussion forums, know the difference between OWCP and Blackboard. They will learn how to join OWCP, advantages of OWCP to EFL students and instructors, how it can be used to develop students’ writing skills, and students’ views. OWCP consists of Moodle-type e-courses, in addition to threaded discussion forums, an Advanced Educational Center, an Interactive Learning Center, Live chat, Live Tutoring, a writing tutorial that offers basic writing lessons, peer review help, online writing assistant and others. OWCP has 97 writing tutors who provide on-to-one tutoring. Students and instructors are free to post a thread about anything of interest, respond and interact at their own convenience. They can post queries and receive answers. They can use a nickname. It can be used for credit and non-credit. I will introduce OWCP, compare OWCP with Blackboard, and report participants’ opinions. We will explore the writing tools, give a detailed comparison with Blackboard, view examples of participants’ posts and instructional content

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

Male and female college students in Saudi Arabia study in a segregated environment. King Saud University (KSU) has 50,000 students in 3 campuses each of which is 35 kms away. Due to increasing student enrollment, all departments for female students are understaffed. Due to latest development in technology, all three campuses were upgraded and are now connected through fibre optics with a LAN. The Olaysha campus hosting women’s colleges of Education, Arts, Administrative Science, Languages, and Graduate college has installed a new videoconferencing lab and two large-lecture halls. Through these, female students and instructors can attend conferences, classes, meetings, defenses, workshops, and functions simultaneously with men. However, facilities are not optimally used. Attendees will gain insight into use of new technology (videoconferencing) in educational settings in other cultures. They will gain knowledge about their set-up, equipment, applications, uses, capacity, limitations, students’ opinions of their effect, and causes of under-use. A description of the videoconferencing lab and large-lecture & videoconferencing halls at KSU will be given in terms of setup, equipment, software, capacity, hours of use per semester, how graduate and undergraduate lectures, conferences, presentations by invited speakers, live functions such as graduation ceremonies are broadcast, how workshops and defenses are conducted, and how interaction takes place, what problems are solved by the videoconferencing technology. The uses, causes of under-use, and male and female students and instructors’ opinions of the effect of videoconferencing on learning, and student-instructor and student-student interaction will be reported in detail.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The present study aimed at investigating ESL students’ ability to comprehend and identify emphatic structures in advertisements, to find out the emphatic features that are easy to identify, and those that are difficult to identify. 60 ESL junior college students enrolled in a stylistics course took a test which consisted of an advertisement. The subjects were asked to identify the emphatic features of that advertisement and give two examples that illustrate the feature they give. Analysis of the subjects’ correct responses showed that the emphatic structures that the subjects could identify are: balanced sentence structure (53%), repeating key words (53%), arranging ideas in the order of climax, i.e. order of importance with the strongest idea last (45%), using active voice (33%), changing sentence length abruptly (33%), placing important words at the end of the sentence (32%), using periodic sentences (30%), placing emphatic words after a colon or a dash (27.5%), putting a word or phrase out of its usual order (23%) and identifying intensifiers, extraposition, exclamatory sentences, using anticipatory ‘it’, and changing sentence types together (20%). The percentages given reflect the difficulty level of the different emphatic features of the advertisement, and areas with which they had comprehension difficulties. Causes of advertisement comprehension problems and recommendations for instructional techniques that would help enhance the students’ ability to identify and comprehend emphatic structures will be given.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

Almost every upper and middle class family (especially families with working mothers) in Saudi Arabia has a maid. Some affluent families even hire a nanny to raise the kids. Others hire a nanny who speaks English. Maids and/or nannies are recruited from non-Arabic speaking countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, or Ethiopia. They are recruited for two-year terms, but once a maid’s term is over, another maid, who might be from a different country, takes over. The maid live at home for 24 hours and over weekends and holidays The maid does not only do the house chores, but takes care of the kids since they are babies. Upon arrival in Saudi Arabia, many maids do not speak Arabic. They start to pick up the Arabic language from the family among whom they live, and when they speak it, their Arabic is far from perfect. Their Arabic language is characterized by incorrect pronunciation and sentence structure and limited vocabulary knowledge. This study aims at finding out what role foreign house maids play in Saudi small children’s acquisition of Arabic (L1), what influence the maid has on the children’s acquisition of Arabic pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. The study will try to find out the factors contributing to the negative influence of the maid’s language over the children’ acquisition of L1. To answer these questions, 300 mothers were surveyed. All the subjects have small children under the age of six in the family. It was found that 60% of the subjects are working mothers. 90% have a non-Arabic speaking maid, and 10% have an English-speaking maid. It was also found that most maids speak neither English nor Arabic when they arrive in Saudi Arabia. They pick up the Arabic language spoken at home by immersion. The maids learn to speak faulty Arabic in terms of pronunciation, sentence structure and grammatical forms such as plural formation, and use of feminine and masculine genders. They produce incomplete sentences and are unable to produce certain Arabic phonemes correctly. Their vocabulary knowledge is limited. Those who speak English, speak it with a non-native accent. Results of the surveys showed that in most cases, the maid has little influence over the child’s acquisition of Arabic, despite the fact that those children are raised by the foreign maid since they were babies and are emotionally attached to her. A small percentage of the children imitate the maid when they first start to learn Arabic at age 2 and 3. They are unable to produce Arabic sounds correctly, make mistakes in plural formation and gender. It seems that the maid’s influence depends on how much time the child spends with the maid, how much time the mother spends with the child, whether the child has siblings, and play mates. When the child goes to kindergarten, traces of foreign accent resulting from imitating the maid’s foreign Arabic accent and faulty use disappear, and the child is able to speak Arabic correctly and natively.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

English has become a global language. It is widely used in Saudi Arabia, although the official language is Arabic. As a result, many Saudi parents are wondering what the optimal age for teaching English to young children is. Should they talk to young children at home in English, in Arabic or both? Should they send their children to a kindergarten that uses English as a medium of instruction, teaches English as a subject or teaches Arabic only? Does teaching English (L2) to young Saudi children affect their acquisition of Arabic (L1) and their academic achievement in later stages? The present study tried to explore parents’ perceptions of L2 acquisition and its effect on simultaneous L1 acquisition and academic achievement. Interviews with a representative sample of 300 mothers revealed that 70% believe that English instruction should start in kindergarten. 70% prefer to enroll their children in a kindergarten that would teach them both English and Arabic. 50% prefer to speak English with their children at home. 70% believe that teaching English to young children has no negative effect on L1 acquisition and has a positive effect on their scholastic achievement in later years. Findings also revealed many stereotypes and misconceptions among mothers about the optimal age for teaching L2, the effect of L2 acquisition on L1 acquisition and on scholastic achievement, and the attribution of failure to learn English by junior and senior high school students to their learning English at an older age, i.e, grade 7, rather than any other factors. Mothers also believe that children can learn both English and Arabic easily and effortlessly and can learn to speak English with a native accent. The second language acquisition literature and theories were reviewed to clarify those common misconceptions and stereotypes. Some recommendations regarding the teaching of English to children under the age of six will be given.

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Website:  http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf

The present study aimed at investigating ESL college students’ ability to comprehend news headlines, to identify the stylistic features of news headlines, to find out the features that are easy to identify, and those that are difficult to identify and to identify error causes. 68 ESL junior college students enrolled in a stylistics course took a test which consisted of a sample of news headlines. The subjects were asked to identify the stylistic features of those news headlines, give examples that illustrate the features they give, fill in missing words and substitute punctuation marks, infinitives and block language by their meanings. Analysis of the subjects’ correct responses showed that 75% of the subjects were able to identify initials in the news headlines, 72% could recognize surnames and infinitives used instead of the ‘future’, 51% could recognize places where articles are deleted, 49% could identify block language, 21% were able to identify passive structures used in the news headlines, 15% could recognize places were verb to be is deleted, and 6% could identify ellipsis. Analysis of the incorrect responses showed areas with which the subjects had syntactic, semantic, background knowledge problems. Recommendations for news headlines comprehension instruction will be given.